


last times, first times

by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7304449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello,” he said, unsure of how to begin a funeral. His heart was pounding; this was Jenny’s funeral and the least he could do to make up all the wrongs he’d done her was get this right. “Er—” He fumbled with his papers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	last times, first times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roca/gifts).



The last time Giles had kissed Jenny had been a long one in the library, when they were researching Angelus. Or, more accurately, it had been a series of kisses. Her hands had grabbed the lapels of his jacket when he backed her up into the wall and kissed her, hard, trying to remember that in the midst of all this terror and uncertainty there was one truly good thing in his life.

The last time Giles had touched Jenny had been when they’d bumped into each other in the faculty lounge a few days before he lost her. She’d nearly dropped her papers. He’d nearly tried to help her. But in the end, he’d steeled himself and walked past her without apologizing or looking back, even though the back of his hand (which had brushed against her shoulder) was tingling slightly at contact that wasn’t even skin-on-skin.

The last time Giles had seen Jenny had been in her classroom—or no, truthfully, if the criteria was seeing Jenny herself, he was seeing her right now. But if he needed to see Jenny, alive, he’d have to go back in time a few days to that moment in her classroom. Right now, he was opening the casket for the last time. The funeral was a closed-casket ceremony.

He’d had to check for bites all over and it had felt like a violation. Even worse was the fact that Angelus hadn’t seemed interested in drinking from her or turning her. No, not  _worse_ exactly; he was somewhat glad (although genuine happiness was something that eluded him these days) that he hadn’t had to stake Jenny or see her as a vampire. But the idea of Angelus killing Jenny merely because she meant something to  _him_  was worse by far than Angelus killing Jenny because she was there.

Giles looked at Jenny for a few long seconds, storing away every last detail of her face. The last time he’d seen her with her eyes closed, she’d been lying in bed next to him pretending to be asleep. Her mouth had been twitching and holding back a smile. 

There seemed to be a lot of last times with Jenny as of late. He still didn’t recall the last time he told her he loved her. Or the first.

“Giles,” said Buffy softly, coming up behind him and placing a tentative hand on his elbow. Giles carefully closed the coffin and turned to his Slayer. “The funeral’s going to start in a few minutes. Do you have your eulogy?”

Without a word, Giles held up the piece of paper.

Buffy nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.

Giles couldn’t find anything comforting to say to her. He nodded awkwardly back and wished Jenny were here. She’d be giving him an exasperated look right about now, jerking her head pointedly towards Buffy, and then he’d have to come up with something or he’d have an irate Jenny on his hands.

Frankly, under these circumstances, any Jenny would be better than no Jenny at all. “Go sit down,” he said. He sounded a bit hoarse, or a bit like he might cry. He wasn’t sure which and didn’t particularly care. Turning back to the coffin, he rested a hand on the polished wood, attempting to draw some sort of sustenance from the fact that the last of Jenny was in there.

He couldn’t understand it. He was ashamed to say that he’d never questioned before why others he knew died, but he couldn’t possibly understand how someone as vibrantly alive as Jenny could die so quickly and for no reason other than the fact that she was loved. 

And she had been loved. Deeply. More so than Giles had believed himself capable of. He hadn’t fallen so completely in love before, and he’d never had his feelings returned with equal passion from someone who knew all sides of him. Jenny had seen Eyghon, she knew him as a Watcher, but she looked at him like he was Rupert and Rupert alone, and that had been stunning and wonderful. He could wax poetry about her lively eyes, or her dark hair, or her quick wit, but the truly unique facet of his love for her had been that they’d known and loved each other regardless of their respective pasts.

He hadn’t stopped loving her, and he was terrified that he would, given time. Her family would forget; she’d failed them. The children were too young, and she’d never really been a part of their circle for any reasons besides his feelings for her (although there were plenty more reasons that she should have been appreciated for). If he didn’t remember her, who would? 

Giles was jerked out of his thoughts by the sounds of footsteps and murmuring as people sat down. It was an outdoor funeral; Jenny didn’t seem suited for the solemnity of a church. The sun was in the sky for the first time in months, it seemed, but the weather had always seemed somewhat colder when Jenny wasn’t with him.

There had been one cold day in spring. When she’d jokingly complained about her hands being cold, he’d given her one of his gloves, then linked his other hand with hers so that their glove-free hands could trade warmth. She’d called him a true genius and kissed him on the cheek. It hadn’t been as cold as he’d thought.

Buffy cleared her throat pointedly from one of the folding chairs in the front, and Giles remembered that he would be delivering Jenny’s eulogy. He stepped forward to the microphone set up in front of the chairs.

He tapped it. It worked. 

“Hello,” he said, unsure of how to begin a funeral. His heart was pounding; this was  _Jenny’s_ funeral and the least he could do to make up all the wrongs he’d done her was get this right. “Er—” He fumbled with his papers.

But looking down at what he’d written, it seemed too  _much,_ too personal, not right to share with these people who barely knew him and had known Jenny even less. He swallowed hard, looked up.

“Jenny Calendar was a good woman and an admirable teacher,” he said stiffly. He sounded overly disconnected even to himself, hardly like he was officiating his girlfriend’s funeral and more like he was giving instructions on how to take a test. He hated it. He missed her. “She showed me many things about myself, and in return I like to think I gave her some semblance of happiness for the short time she was with us. She—” His voice caught. He would not cry in front of these people. His grief was not for them to witness. “She will be remembered.” 

There was a strained, awkward silence, and it was too much for Giles. Dropping the microphone, he hurried out and away, away from the field, towards his car. He ignored Buffy calling his name, ignored the sobbing that sounded like Willow, he had to go, had to leave, had to get  _out—_

He reached the car and took a shuddering breath. Tears were pouring down his cheeks and his shoulders were shaking but he didn’t seem to be making a sound. What had he said? He could barely remember. She’d deserved better than this. She’d deserved better than death. She’d deserved better than him. 

He heard Buffy’s voice, now closer, and wiped roughly at his face. Tweed. Always rather scratchy. He was managing to stop crying, at least. He turned towards Buffy. “Yes?” he said. It was taking every effort to remain composed and calm.

“Giles, are you okay?” Buffy asked, reaching out to him. She placed a tentative hand on his shoulder. “I—I mean obviously you’re not gonna be  _okay_ okay for a while, but I thought you said you were going to make a speech? Or—”

“Change of plans,” said Giles. “If you’ll excuse me.” He brushed Buffy off, throat tight, and unlocked his car. “I have business elsewhere.”

“Giles, it’s Ms. Calendar’s  _funeral,_ ” said Buffy, clearly stunned and hurt on Jenny’s behalf.  _That’s a first, then,_ he thought bitterly, and hated himself for it. “What could possibly—”

“I can’t,” said Giles, getting into the car. “I’m sorry.” Pulling the door shut, he dared to glance at Buffy. The look on her face made him consider getting out of the car and going back to the funeral. And then he imagined being there when Jenny was put in the ground, knowing for certain that she wasn’t coming back, and he  _couldn’t._

* * *

 

He drove. He drove home, and collapsed into his chair. He wasn’t certain as to when he had started his silent crying again, but he was grateful, at least, that he’d managed to keep himself collected in front of Buffy. Truly, there was little bitterness he held against her, and the ill feelings there were stemmed from ridiculous notions that had more to do with himself than with her. That he’d always put Buffy over Jenny and Jenny had died because of it.

But if he hadn’t been selfish and foolish enough to love her, it wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place. She would be alive. Perhaps not with him, but still alive.

Giles took out his papers again, the clumsily written eulogy.  _Jenny Calendar was everything to me,_ it began, stupidly cliché _._ Even in death, he couldn’t seem to give her what she deserved.

What had she deserved? 

Love. Love from someone free of responsibility, who could give all of themselves to her without having so many obligations and duties holding them back. But then Jenny had never seemed to care about the responsibilities Giles had reluctantly placed before her. He’d tell her that their date would be put on hold and she’d kiss the corner of his mouth and tell him to come back from patrolling in one piece.  _If you die, I’ll kill you, England,_ she’d say, and he’d comment that it was a bit of a cliché statement, not to mention nonsensical and illogical, and then she’d kiss him harder and give him a hug and push him out the door.

She’d stay at his place sometimes, curled on the couch until he came home (and wasn’t it funny, how it was  _his apartment_ when she wasn’t there but  _home_ when she was) and when he came in she’d jump up and check his pulse and just hold him for a few minutes. Times were that she’d kiss him, searing and passionate, when she knew he was safe, but something had shifted when they’d gotten back together for the second time. Jenny had embraced him for longer, rested her cheek on his shoulder, held his hand in the hallways when they were certain no one was looking. 

He marveled now at how idiotic he must have been to not realize she’d loved him. It had seemed so impossible that she could love him, not someone like  _him,_ a disaster of a man who just kept on getting her hurt and putting her in danger and wasn’t even that suave or dashing to begin with. It had made sense to him in a strange way when they’d found out her true motivations for being in Sunnydale, because of  _course_ she couldn’t have  _truly_ loved him. He was a stepping stone, a convenient way to get closer to Buffy and Angel.

Except he wasn’t, and never had been, and he’d thought so little of himself and so much of her (even after she’d betrayed all of their trust) that he hadn’t been able to see that.

_Jenny Calendar was everything to me._

Everything. It was a large word, thrown haphazardly into the eulogy in the midst of grief and pain. He’d written it the night after he found her dead in his bed, and the scrawling handwriting and smudged ink reflected that. She had been everything to him. She had seen him and loved him and she’d fit in his arms just right and fit in his world even more perfectly. And then she hadn’t seemed to fit in his life quite as neatly, and he’d given up too easily, and it was his fault, his fault, his—

Tears were falling fast onto the eulogy. Giles moved it over onto the desk and stood up, trying to make his breathing even and calm. He uttered a small, broken sob, the only sound he’d made since entering his apartment. She’d deserved more than him, a wreck of a Watcher with delusions of being anything but his job. She’d seen something in him that he didn’t know if he could find again. 

 _Be that as it may,_ said a small voice,  _she still loved you._

She’d loved without any reason or logic.

Although, to be fair, he had as well.

Giles took a handkerchief out of his pocket and roughly scrubbed at his face until he felt somewhat drier. His glasses were fogged and smudged by tears. He took them off his nose and polished them, and after putting them back on, picked up the eulogy again.   

_Jenny Calendar was everything to me._

She hadn’t been, of course. If she’d been everything, he wouldn’t have let her go. But under different circumstances, in a different life, she would easily have been everything to him. Giles picked up a pen, crossed out the sentence, paused, and wrote above it.

 _Jenny Calendar loved me more than I deserved,_ he began.

* * *

 

The paper was smudged and his writing illegible to all but himself by the time he reached the cemetery. Buffy had said she’d like to go with him to see the grave, but he’d asked her to let him make this first trip alone. It would give them some semblance of privacy.

Jenny had always appreciated their time alone.

His heart clenched when he saw the gravestone. Even in death, Jenny made him feel like he had never felt before. Now, however, it certainly wasn’t quite as dizzily happy; much the opposite.

_Jennifer Calendar._

“I didn’t bring flowers,” said Giles. His voice was trembling. This felt like a nightmare and he was desperate to wake up and roll over and see Jenny on the other side of the bed, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. “I—I will next time. I wanted to give you something else, this first time.”

He unfolded the paper, hands shaking. The words swam in front of him, briefly, but then he imagined failing Jenny again and they snapped into focus. He cleared his throat.

It was him and his love, alone again.

“Jenny Calendar loved me more than I deserved,” he read, focusing on the words, thinking of the way Jenny used to look up at him with soft eyes when he broke a kiss to stroke her hair. “She took pride in her intellect, and I told her constantly that she was beautiful— _not_ that she ever needed my validation—but I don’t think she ever fully comprehended how much love she possessed. She was kind, and compassionate, and forgiving—”

He thought of her eyes, the light in them. Thought of them dulled and staring blankly ahead, her neck tilted at a strange angle, her dead on his bed

_keep reading_

“—and I never returned her forgiveness in kind when it came my turn to learn her secret,” Giles said. He was crying now. He had never cried in front of Jenny. He would never cry in front of Jenny, because she would never be alive to see it. “She could have lost her life because of my foolishness and recklessness as a young man, and she came back to me with no less trust and love than before. Her family’s instructions and factors beyond her control hurt someone close to me, and I made no effort to give her the forgiveness she so readily granted me, nor did I try and explain to those around me why she was worth forgiving.”

He knelt down in front of the tombstone, lightly tracing her name. Or it wasn’t her name, really, which he took some comfort from; a gravestone that read  _Jenny Calendar_  would mean finality that he didn’t know when he would be ready for. 

“I still dream about the night I found her,” he said. “The only thing I want to dream about is the way she would smile at me. She made me feel like I’d never felt before, and I don’t know if I can find those feelings again.”

He let his hand drop, the papers fluttering to the ground. Jenny had been a perfect blend of impulse and logic and she’d never seemed to deliberate on her words as much as he. Perhaps he should try to take a leaf out of her book.

“You can’t leave me,” he said quietly. Borrowed words, but true nonetheless. “I can’t do this without you.” 

He raised his hand to his mouth, kissed his fingers, and pressed them against the cold marble of the tombstone. “I love you,” he murmured. It hurt more than he’d imagined to finally say it aloud.

The last time Giles told Jenny Calendar he loved her was the first time, as well, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it to her again.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthdayyyyy and I hope this was sufficiently heart-wrenching!!


End file.
